This was becoming a pattern. A horrible ongoing trainwreck disaster of a pattern.

People came, people left, and it was the two of them again.

Jeremy was dead. Nate had disappeared off in the middle of the night, like everyone else who they had met on the island. And then he'd end up dying or killing just like everyone else.

It was weird. They'd never seen any of it happen. Only what was left. Was it any better that they didn't see it? Or was it wearing down upon them more than actually

It wasn't like they weren't trying to help. And it at least felt like they were less murderous or suicidal than at least half the people left alive on the island. And yet, everybody left anyway.

What was he supposed to say to her?

It wasn't like he had any reply.

Or more specifically he had too many, each and every one wrong in their own special way, and maybe that was the point, that you could never be perfect and that sometimes you couldn't do anything but hurt someone else no matter what you did. But he didn't want to hurt anyone, and all he could do was try not to look depressed or angry, hoping that the realisation that not talking about any of this was just making everything worse would go away.

"I- N-never mind."

He was too stressed. He almost said something dumb. Stupid. Insane. Some other synonym that his tired brain was failing to think of right now. It'd had been fun being with Hazel, and maybe that was part of the problem.They couldn't get themselves out of this stupid place because they were having fun, and avoiding everyone and everything, both by fate and by choice.

Maybe he understood Nate just a little now. Too little, too late though. He wanted to break down and cry but somehow he couldn't. Not just because she was watching him. Not just because the world was watching him. No, his emotions were so much of a mess on the inside that it couldn't even cohere into a breakdown.

"Why... do they keep leaving?"

He shouldn't have asked that.

Not out loud.

He could see it in her eyes.

And it was only now he realised that she had said the same thing, only with different words.

"I have the heart of a young boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk" -- Stephen King